Remembering what was (ATF)
by Quacked Lurker
Summary: (ATF) Fifteen years is a lot of time to cover. As much as they are a team now, they hadn't always been a close-knit family. Fifteen years ago, Chris, Ezra, Vin, Josiah, Nathan, Buck and JD had led separate lives, not knowing what the future would bring - as much as they work together now, they still need time alone to remember and reflect.


**Vin Tanner** ~ Days like today, Vin Tanner wondered what life would have been like if he'd sought out a military career, instead of doing a stint and a single tour of duty oversees. Days like today, days of remembrances of an attack out of the blue sent a whole nation reeling in shock … and seeing an unprecedented surge in volunteers for the armed forces to make those who dared attack American Citizens on American Soil, pay!

Days like tomorrow and yesterday, Vin knew getting out when he could had been the only way he could continue making a difference in the lives of those he swore to protect at all costs.

"Paperwork stinks," He grumbled, wanting to go back out on the field, where he uniformed brothers were fighting for their very lives – and little mention of the price paid in blood, sweet, and tears ever made it to the news.

 **JD Dunne** ~ JD Dunne might have not been old enough to appreciate a world where it was unthinkable to turn hijacked planes into kamikaze targets, but he did remember what he'd been doing that Tuesday morning a lifetime ago: his mother had taken the day off so he could show her what he learned in his computer science class … okay, so elementary school didn't do "science" and "computer" like the high school level did, but the first-year teacher hadn't realized what all he'd been doing outside of assignments.

His mom didn't fully understand all the coding and program manipulation he'd been doing, but she at least, understood he had a rare gift with electronics, and – after praising his inventiveness – warned him not to trust sites he did not know, pointing out that as good as he was at circumventing firewalls, others were just as good, using their skills to hurt and harm others just because.

They'd planned on spending the day together, celebrating life and his accomplishments, when all the channels switched to one station of news.

 **Chris Larabee** ~ Fifteen years ago, Chris had been drowning in his own personal hell. He'd lost his wife and their only son, and hadn't climbed out of the bottomless well of grief to really notice what was going on outside his little world.

Larabee's only coherent thought that September afternoon had been, "the world is mourning with me. About dang time".

 **Josiah Sanchez** ~ Being old enough to remember Pearl Harbor did not mean he thought any less of the World Trade Center – no, it simply lent him a grasp of the horror long before most others on the workforce understood, that, Yes. This. Was. Real!

Then again, in 1941, television hadn't yet replaced radios and newspapers, so there was still some delay between the event's occurrence and the world's knowledge of the event, meant there had been delay enough for those at ground zero to start to get a hold of their shock before a public outcry was heard, and a response by the highest level of government had been begun.

Aside from being the second attack against his country-of-birth on native soil, there were little similarities between the events Josiah could pinpoint.

December 7th had lived in infamy … for a generation. The memory of September 11th didn't seem to have lasted nearly as long.

 **Ezra Standish** ~ He didn't like thinking about the past; his own upbringing made it dangerous to do so. Ezra Standish had been in school, but his counterparts – Eddie Small, Eric Stevens, Ezekiel Smith, and dozens of theirs – had not been tempted to ditch private tutors. Oh no! One criminal who shared his initials, had been carjacking, another wanna-be mastermind, had been enjoying a delicious meal.

Remembering what his various identities had been doing years ago did not make it any easier to keep track of what was real, and what had been blatantly made up.

A wrong answer to anyone outside his family could very well spell his doom. He refused to let his enemies take him out that easily.

 **Nathan Jackson** ~ When asked what he'd been doing fifteen years ago, Jackson's answer would be "the same thing I do every day! Patch people up."

If he'd been asked any follow up question – like "where do you see yourself in fifteen years?" – his answer would not change. "Put people together – it's what I'm good at."

If asked, why, he's likely respond, "how else am I supposed to save lives?"

Or, "why not let the professionals handle it," Nathan would retort, "I AM A PROFESSIONAL," and perhaps go into detail why he trusted himself over any generic stranger. Included in that explanation would be the words "overworked" and "under-equipped".

He wouldn't be wrong. Even the hospitals where the M-7 team typically held up after a nasty gunfight, had to send patients elsewhere for more specialized medicine or equipment to diagnose and take care of various injuries he'd seen on the job. More than once the doctors, nurses, and other staff welcomed M-7 – officially, the team had never helped out by grabbing hot coffee, running paper to doctors, watching monitors, cleaning rooms, steering visitors to wounded family. Officially, Jackson had never seen a doctor fall asleep on his feet, nor nurses take catnaps between rounds of disposing medicine to patients.

Rules and regulations meant there were no visitors to the critical wards … hospital staff were careful to never note when M7 visited their friends outside visiting hours. Those who did receive family, tended to recover faster, (if the patients ever did), and Jackson had finally pounded it through several thick skulls that "clean rooms" had to remain clean enough to eat off of.

 **Buck Wilmington** ~ Never let it be said that Buck Wilmington had met his match. He didn't understand the obsession some women had with dates of anniversaries, but he did grasp the importance of remembering specific days.

September 11 was easy for him, cause it happened to be the day he lost his mother long ago – and the creeping memories of the date had caught him unaware once or twice. Since then, he'd discovered ways of being "unavailable" so he could remember the good times – and the bad times – on his own, without hundreds of strangers trying to mourn with him. His family understood.

They had their own ways of connecting with the past – to commemorate what had been lost, and what had been gained in the years since.


End file.
